Freud - Complete Works (816 page)

   If we consider mankind as a whole
and substitute it for the single human individual, we discover that
it too has developed delusions which are inaccessible to logical
criticism and which contradict reality. If, in spite of this, they
are able to exert an extraordinary power over men, investigation
leads us to the same explanation as in the case of the single
individual. They owe their power to the element of
historical
truth
which they have brought up from the repression of the
forgotten and primaeval past.

5060

SPLITTING OF THE EGO IN THE PROCESS OF DEFENCE

(1940)

5061

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5062

SPLITTING OF THE EGO IN THE PROCESS OF DEFENCE

I find myself for a moment in the interesting
position of not knowing whether what I have to say should be
regarded as something long familiar and obvious or as something
entirely new and puzzling. But I am inclined to think the
latter.

   I have at last been struck by the
fact that the ego of a person whom we know as a patient in analysis
must, dozens of years earlier, when it was young, have behaved in a
remarkable manner in certain particular situations of pressure. We
can assign in general and somewhat vague terms the conditions under
which this comes about, by saying that it occurs under the
influence of a psychical trauma. I prefer to select a single
sharply defined special case, though it certainly does not cover
all the possible modes of causation.

   Let us suppose, then, that a
child’s ego is under the sway of a powerful instinctual
demand which it is accustomed to satisfy and that it is suddenly
frightened by an experience which teaches it that the continuance
of this satisfaction will result in an almost intolerable real
danger. It must now decide either to recognize the real danger,
give way to it and renounce the instinctual satisfaction, or to
disavow reality and make itself believe that there is no reason for
fear, so that it may be able to retain the satisfaction. Thus there
is a conflict between the demand by the instinct and the
prohibition by reality. But in fact the child takes neither course,
or rather he takes both simultaneously, which comes to the same
thing. He replies to the conflict with two contrary reactions, both
of which are valid and effective. On the one hand, with the help of
certain mechanisms he rejects reality and refuses to accept any
prohibition; on the other hand, in the same breath he recognizes
the danger of reality, takes over the fear of that danger as a
pathological symptom and tries subsequently to divest himself of
the fear. It must be confessed that this is a very ingenious
solution of the difficulty. Both of the parties to the dispute
obtain their share: the instinct is allowed to retain its
satisfaction and proper respect is shown to reality. But everything
has to be paid for in one way or another, and this success is
achieved at the price of a rift in the ego which never heals but
which increases as time goes on. The two contrary reactions to the
conflict persist as the centre-point of a splitting of the ego. The
whole process seems so strange to us because we take for granted
the synthetic nature of the processes of the ego. But we are
clearly at fault in this. The synthetic function of the ego, though
it is of such extraordinary importance, is subject to particular
conditions and is liable to a whole number of disturbances.

Splitting Of The Ego In The Process Of Defence

5063

   It will assist if I introduce an
individual case history into this schematic disquisition. A little
boy, while he was between three and four years of age, had become
acquainted with the female genitals through being seduced by an
older girl. After these relations had been broken off, he carried
on the sexual stimulation set going in this way by zealously
practising manual masturbation; but he was soon caught at it by his
energetic nurse and was threatened with castration, the carrying
out of which was, as usual, ascribed to his father. There were thus
present in this case conditions calculated to produce a tremendous
effect of fright. A threat of castration by itself need not produce
a great impression. A child will refuse to believe in it, for he
cannot easily imagine the possibility of losing such a highly
prized part of his body. His sight of the female genitals might
have convinced our child of that possibility. But he drew no such
conclusion from it, since his disinclination to doing so was too
great and there was no motive present which could compel him to. On
the contrary, whatever uneasiness he may have felt was calmed by
the reflection that what was missing would yet make its appearance:
she would grow one (a penis) later. Anyone who has observed enough
small boys will be able to recollect having come across some such
remark at the sight of a baby sister’s genitals. But it is
different if both factors are present together. In that case the
threat revives the memory of the perception which had hitherto been
regarded as harmless and finds in that memory a dreaded
confirmation. The little boy now thinks he understands why the
girl’s genitals showed no sign of a penis and no longer
ventures to doubt that his own genitals may meet with the same
fate. Thenceforward he cannot help believing in the reality of the
danger of castration.

Splitting Of The Ego In The Process Of Defence

5064

   The usual result of the fright of
castration, the result that passes as the normal one, is that,
either immediately or after some considerable struggle, the boy
gives way to the threat and obeys the prohibition either wholly or
at least in part (that is, by no longer touching his genitals with
his hand). In other words, he gives up, in whole or in part, the
satisfaction of the instinct. We are prepared to hear, however,
that our present patient found another way out. He created a
substitute for the penis which he missed in females - that is to
say, a fetish. In so doing, it is true that he had disavowed
reality, but he had saved his own penis. So long as he was not
obliged to acknowledge that females have lost their penis, there
was no need for him to believe the threat that had been made
against him: he need have no fears for his own penis, so he could
proceed with his masturbation undisturbed. This behaviour on the
part of our patient strikes us forcibly as being a turning away
from reality - a procedure which we should prefer to reserve for
psychoses. And it is in fact not very different. Yet we will
suspend our judgement, for upon closer inspection we shall discover
a not unimportant distinction. The boy did not simply contradict
his perceptions and hallucinate a penis where there was none to be
seen; he effected no more than a displacement of value - he
transferred the importance of the penis to another part of the
body, a procedure in which he was assisted by the mechanism of
regression (in a manner which need not here be explained). This
displacement, it is true, related only to the female body; as
regards his own penis nothing was changed.

   This way of dealing with reality,
which almost deserves to be described as artful, was decisive as
regards the boy’s practical behaviour. He continued with his
masturbation as though it implied no danger to his penis; but at
the same time, in complete contradiction to his apparent boldness
or indifference, he developed a symptom which showed that he
nevertheless did recognize the danger. He had been threatened with
being castrated by his father, and immediately afterwards,
simultaneously with the creation of his fetish, he developed an
intense fear of his father punishing him, which it required the
whole force of his masculinity to master and overcompensate. This
fear of his father, too, was silent on the subject of castration:
by the help of regression to an oral phase, it assumed the form of
a fear of being eaten by his father. At this point it is impossible
to forget a primitive fragment of Greek mythology which tells how
Kronos, the old Father God, swallowed his children and sought to
swallow his youngest son Zeus like the rest, and how Zeus was saved
by the craft of his mother and later on castrated his father. But
we must return to our case history and add that the boy produced
yet another symptom, though it was a slight one, which he has
retained to this day. This was an anxious susceptibility against
either of his little toes being touched, as though, in all the to
and fro between disavowal and acknowledgement, it was nevertheless
castration that found the clearer
expression. . . .

*      
*      
*     
 *       *

5065

SOME ELEMENTARY LESSONS IN PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

(1940)

5066

Intentionally left blank

5067

SOME ELEMENTARY LESSONS IN PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

An author who sets out to introduce some
branch of knowledge - or, to put it more modestly, some branch of
research - to an uninstructed public must clearly make his choice
between two methods or techniques.

   It is possible to start off from
what every reader knows (or thinks he knows) and regards as
self-evident, without in the first instance contradicting him. An
opportunity will soon occur for drawing his attention to facts in
the same field, which, though they are known to him, he has so far
neglected or insufficiently appreciated. Beginning from these, one
can introduce further facts to him of which he has
no
knowledge and so prepare him for the necessity of going beyond his
earlier judgements, of seeking new points of view and of taking new
hypotheses into consideration. In this way one can get him to take
a part in building up a new theory about the subject and one can
deal with his objections to it during the actual course of the
joint work. A method of this kind might well be called
genetic
. It follows the path along which the investigator
himself has travelled earlier. In spite of all its advantages, it
has the defect of not making a sufficiently striking effect upon
the learner. He will not be nearly so much impressed by something
which he has watched coming into existence and passing through a
slow and difficult period of growth as he would be by something
that is presented to him ready-made as an apparently self-contained
whole.

   It is precisely this last effect
which is produced by the alternative method of presentation. This
other method, the
dogmatic
one, begins straight away by
stating its conclusions. Its premisses make demands upon the
audience’s attention and belief and very little is adduced in
support of them. And there is then a danger that a critical hearer
may shake his head and say: ‘All this sounds most peculiar:
where does the fellow get it from?’

   In what follows I shall not rely
exclusively upon either of the two methods of presentation: I shall
make use now of one and now of the other. I am under no delusion
about the difficulty of my task. Psycho-analysis has little
prospect of becoming liked or popular. It is not merely that much
of what it has to say offends people’s feelings. Almost as
much difficulty is created by the fact that our science involves a
number of hypotheses - it is hard to say whether they should be
regarded as postulates or as products of our researches - which are
bound to seem very strange to ordinary modes of thought and which
fundamentally contradict current views. But there is no help for
it. We must begin our brief study with two of these hazardous
hypotheses.

Some Elementary Lessons In Psycho-Analysis

5068

THE NATURE OF THE PSYCHICAL

   Psycho-analysis is a part of the
mental science of psychology. It is also described as ‘depth
psychology’ - we shall later discover why. If someone asks
what ‘the psychical’ really means, it is easy to reply
by enumerating its constituents: our perceptions, ideas, memories,
feelings and acts of volition - all these form part of what is
psychical. But if the questioner goes further and asks whether
there is not some common quality possessed by all these processes
which makes it possible to get nearer to the
nature
, or, as
people sometimes say, the
essence
of the psychical, then it
is harder to give an answer.

   If an analogous question had been
put to a physicist (as to the nature of electricity, for instance),
his reply, until quite recently, would have been: ‘For the
purpose of explaining certain phenomena, we assume the existence of
electrical forces which are present in things and which emanate
from them. We study these phenomena, discover the laws that govern
them and even put them to practical use. This satisfies us
provisionally. We do not know the
nature
of electricity.
Perhaps we may discover it later, as our work goes on. It must be
admitted that what we are ignorant of is precisely the most
important and interesting part of the whole business, but for the
moment that does not worry us. It is simply how things happen in
the natural sciences.’

   Psychology, too, is a natural
science. What else can it be? But its case is different. Not
everyone is bold enough to make judgements about physical matters;
but everyone - the philosopher and the man in the street alike -
has his opinion on psychological questions and behaves as if he
were at least an
amateur
psychologist. And now comes the
remarkable thing. Everyone - or almost everyone - was agreed that
what is psychical really
has
a common quality in which its
essence is expressed: namely the quality of
being conscious
- unique, indescribable, but needing no description. All that is
conscious, they said, is psychical, and conversely all that is
psychical is conscious: that is self-evident and to contradict it
is nonsense. It cannot be said that this decision threw much light
upon the nature of the psychical, for consciousness is one of the
fundamental facts of our life and our researches come up against it
like a blank wall and can find no path beyond it. Moreover the
equation of what is mental with what is conscious had the unwelcome
result of divorcing psychical processes from the general context of
events in the universe and of setting them in complete contrast to
all others. But this would not do, since the fact could not long be
overlooked that psychical phenomena are to a high degree dependent
upon somatic influences and on their side have the most powerful
effects upon somatic processes. If ever human thought found itself
in an
impasse
it was here. To find a way out, the
philosophers at least were obliged to assume that there were
organic processes parallel to the conscious psychical ones, related
to them in a manner that was hard to explain, which acted as
intermediaries in the reciprocal relations between ‘body and
mind’, and which served to re-insert the psychical into the
texture of life. But this solution remained unsatisfactory.

   Psycho-analysis escaped such
difficulties as these by energetically denying the equation between
what is psychical and what is conscious. No; being conscious cannot
be the essence of what is psychical. It is only a
quality
of
what is psychical, and an inconstant quality at that - one that is
far oftener absent than present. The psychical, whatever its nature
may be, is in itself unconscious and probably similar in kind to
all the other natural processes of which we have obtained
knowledge.

   Psycho-analysis bases this
assertion on a number of facts, of which I shall now proceed to
give a selection.

   We know what is meant by ideas
‘occurring’ to one - thoughts that suddenly come into
consciousness without one’s being aware of the steps that led
up to them, though they, too, must have been psychical acts. It can
even happen that one arrives in this way at the solution of some
difficult intellectual problem which has previously for a time
baffled one’s efforts. All the complicated processes of
selection, rejection and decision which occupied the interval were
withdrawn from consciousness. We shall not be putting forward any
new theory in saying that they were unconscious and perhaps, too,
remained so.

Some Elementary Lessons In Psycho-Analysis

5069

   In the second place, I shall pick
a single instance to represent an immensely large class of
phenomena.¹ The President of a public body (the Lower House of
the Austrian Parliament) on one occasion opened a sitting with the
following words: ‘I take notice that a full quorum of members
is present and herewith declare the sitting
closed
.’
It was a slip of the tongue - for there can be no doubt that what
the President intended to say was ‘opened’. Why, then,
did he say the opposite? We shall expect to be told it was an
accidental mistake, a failure in carrying out an intention such as
may easily happen for various reasons: it had no meaning - and in
any case contraries are particularly easily substituted for each
other. If, however, we bear in mind the situation in which the slip
of the tongue occurred, we shall be inclined to prefer another
explanation. Many of the previous sittings of the House had been
disagreeably stormy and had accomplished nothing, so that it would
be only too natural for the President to think at the moment of
making his opening statement: ’If only the sitting
that’s just beginning were finished! I would much rather be
closing then opening it!’ When he began to speak he was
probably not aware of this wish - it was not conscious to him - but
it was certainly present and it succeeded in making itself
effective, against the speaker’s will, in his apparent
mistake. A single instance can scarcely enable us to decide between
two such different explanations. But what if every other instance
of a slip of the tongue could be explained in the same way, and
similarly every slip of the pen, every case of mis-reading or
mis-hearing, and every faulty action? What if in all those
instances (one might actually say, without a single exception) it
was possible to demonstrate the presence of a psychical act - a
thought, a wish or an intention - which would account for the
apparent mistake and which was unconscious at the moment at which
it became effective, even though it may have been conscious
previously? If that were so, it would really no longer be possible
to dispute the fact that psychical acts which are unconscious do
exist and that they are even sometimes active while they are
unconscious and that in that case they can even sometimes get the
better of conscious intentions. The person concerned in a mistake
of this kind can react to it in various ways. He may overlook it
completely or he may notice it himself and become embarrassed and
ashamed. He cannot as a rule find the explanation of it himself
without outside help; and he often refuses to accept the solution
when it is put before him - for a time, at all events.

  
¹
Cf.
The Psychopathology of Everyday
Life
(1901
b
)

Some Elementary Lessons In Psycho-Analysis

5070

   In the third place, finally, it
is possible in the case of persons in a state of hypnosis to prove
experimentally that there are such things as unconscious psychical
acts and that consciousness is not an indispensable condition of
activity. Anyone who has witnessed such an experiment will receive
an unforgettable impression and a conviction that can never be
shaken. Here is more or less what happens. The doctor enters the
hospital ward, puts his umbrella in the corner, hypnotizes one of
the patients and says to him: ‘I’m going out now. When
I come in again, you will come to meet me with my umbrella open and
hold it over my head.’ The doctor and his assistants then
leave the ward. As soon as they come back, the patient, who is no
longer under hypnosis, carries out exactly the instructions that
were given him while he was hypnotized. The doctor questions him:
‘What’s this you’re doing? What’s the
meaning of all this?’ The patient is clearly embarrassed. He
makes some lame remark such as ‘I only thought, doctor, as
it’s raining outside you’d open your umbrella in the
room before you went out.’ The explanation is obviously quite
inadequate and made up on the spur of the moment to offer some sort
of motive for his senseless behaviour. It is clear to us spectators
that he is in ignorance of his real motive. We, however, know what
it is, for we were present when the suggestion was made to him
which he is now carrying out, while he himself knows nothing of the
fact that it is at work in him.¹

  
¹
I am describing experiments made by
Bernheim at Nancy in 1889 at which I myself assisted. In these days
there is no need for me to discuss any doubts as to the genuineness
of hypnotic phenomena of this kind.

Some Elementary Lessons In Psycho-Analysis

5071

   The question of the relation of
the conscious to the psychical may now be regarded as settled:
consciousness is only a
quality
or attribute of what is
psychical, and moreover an inconstant one. But there is one further
objection with which we have to deal. We are told that, in spite of
the facts that have been mentioned, there is no necessity to
abandon the identity between what is conscious and what is
psychical: the so-called unconscious psychical processes are the
organic processes which have long been recognized as running
parallel to the mental ones. This, of course, would reduce our
problem to an apparently indifferent matter of definition. Our
reply is that it would be unjustifiable and inexpedient to make a
breach in the unity of mental life for the sake of propping up a
definition, since it is clear in any case that consciousness can
only offer us an incomplete and broken chain of phenomena. And it
can scarcely be a matter of chance that it was not until the change
had been made in the definition of the psychical that it became
possible to construct a comprehensive and coherent theory of mental
life.

   Nor need it be supposed that this
alternative view of the psychical is an innovation due to
psycho-analysis. A German philosopher, Theodor Lipps, asserted with
the greatest explicitness that the psychical is in itself
unconscious and that the unconscious is the truly psychical. The
concept of the unconscious has long been knocking at the gates of
psychology and asking to be let in. Philosophy and literature have
often toyed with it, but science could find no use for it.
Psycho-analysis has seized upon the concept, has taken it seriously
and has given it a fresh content. By its researches it has led to a
knowledge of characteristics of the unconscious psychical which
have hitherto been unsuspected, and it has discovered some of the
laws which govern it. But none of this implies that the quality of
being conscious has lost its importance for us. It remains the one
light which illuminates our path and leads us through the darkness
of mental life. In consequence of the special character of our
discoveries, our scientific work in psychology will consist in
translating unconscious processes into conscious ones, and thus
filling in the gaps in conscious
perception. . . .